Congress

Nancy Pelosi beat back her toughest challenge yet to her leadership of Democrats in the House of Representatives, defeating Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan to secure another term as House minority leader.

The California Democrat got 134 votes to Ryan's 63 in a secret ballot vote on Wednesday. Pelosi had boasted going into the vote that she had support from two-thirds of the caucus, and she received just over that amount.

No matter who wins the presidential election on Tuesday, it's nearly certain Congress will be more narrowly divided come January.

And with no clear mandate likely coming out of 2016, there is little reason to be overly optimistic that the next Congress can escape the cycle of unproductivity and polarization that has gripped Washington in recent years.

The 115th Congress: Political Dynamics

With little chance of a Democratic House takeover in the 2016 election, the two likeliest scenarios are:

It’s good news to Florida’s Congressional Delegation and Governor Rick Scott that Congress could be close to striking a deal on funding efforts to combat the Zika virus. Florida just passed the 800 mark for the amount of cases reported to health officials. But, Florida leaders are a bit split on how that funding should be accomplished.

Nominations are being taken for the next representatives of Florida in the National Statuary Hall.

The collection of one hundred statues — two from each state — is housed in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington D.C. Florida’s current representatives are Dr. John Gorrie, credited with inventing refrigeration and air conditioning, and General Edmund Kirby Smith, “an army officer and an educator,” according to the Architect of the Capitol’s website.

WASHINGTON -- Every year in Washington the White House and lawmakers in Congress do a strange dance. Feel free to think of it as the Budget Tango: like all things policy oriented, it’s not sexy. But there are precise choreographed movements, with the White House always taking the lead.

This year Republicans decided there would be no dance. GOP leaders upended decades of congressional protocol and refused to even invite Obama administration officials to the Capitol to discuss their budget numbers. South Florida Republican Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart is fine with the move.

The U.S. Congress is back in session with the Western death toll to international terrorism climbing. Last Friday night’s attacks in Paris were the deadliest in France since World War II and the second deadliest in modern Europe after the 2004 train bombing in Madrid.

Pope Francis, in an address to a joint meeting of Congress, encouraged lawmakers to work together to solve the problems of ordinary Americans and to show compassion for people across the globe who are suffering from war and hunger.

Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi recently brought a handful of Democrats with her to Cuba – a trip she calls a sign of “friendship” between the U.S. and the island nation that remains under a congressionally mandated embargo.

This Congress is the least active in the nation’s history. In the past two years, the body has passed only 181 bills that were signed into law by the president. Norm Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, doesn’t rate it very highly.

“This is an embarrassing and miserable Congress, really one of the worst I've ever seen,” he says.